World of Warcraft lost another 300,000 Subscribers last quarter, Patch 4.3 this year
Activision Blizzard latest earning call revealed that World of Warcraft lost another 300,000 subscribers last quarter, following the loss of 600k subscribers announced last quarter.

In this conference call we also learned that:

The next patch will include "major raid and dungeon content", we can most likely expect a raid and a 5-man from Patch 4.3

Patch 4.3 will be the "largest content update since Cataclysm"

It will be released later this year, which means that we can probably expect a PTR soon.

It's also worth noting that despite the loss of players, Mike Morhaime pointed out that the new trial system resulted in an increase in new account creations. For more details on the earning call, go check the coverage on sites such as Venturebeat or Gamasutra.

BlizzCon 2011 Virtual Ticket Now On Sale
The Blizzcon virtual ticket is now available, it seems that some people already got their Murkablo Companion Pet by buying the ticket early. (See this forum thread. However, this is most likely a bug and pets might be removed very soon.

Want to experience the panel discussions, tournaments, game-related announcements, and all the excitement of BlizzCon 2011 from the comfort of your own home? Then be sure to check out the BlizzCon Virtual Ticket!

The BlizzCon 2011 Virtual Ticket is now available for purchase around the world for $39.99 USD (pricing may vary by region). Virtual Ticket coverage will be available as a multi-channel Internet stream and also via Pay Per View on DIRECTV in the United States, granting viewers a front-row seat to all of the action on the show floor including exclusive interviews, demos, and more!

New DIRECTV subscribers in the United States who sign up for DIRECTV service between now and September 25 through www.directv.com/blizzcon will receive this year's BlizzCon Virtual Ticket coverage for free. Existing DIRECTV customers will be able to purchase the event on DIRECTV Pay Per View for $39.99 beginning Monday, October 10. Visit www.directv.com/blizzcon for more info.

DIRECTV customers who order the Pay Per View event through DIRECTV will receive the multi-channel Internet stream at no extra charge, and those who order the BlizzCon Virtual Ticket will also receive this year’s to-be-announced BlizzCon-exclusive World of Warcraft and StarCraft II in-game items.

Don't miss out! To learn more about the BlizzCon Virtual Ticket, head on over to our official BlizzCon 2011 Live Stream page or read the FAQ.

Cenarion Hatchling Raises More Than $1.9 Million for Japan Earthquake Relief

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Thanks to the overwhelming generosity of World of Warcraft players around the world who purchased the Cenarion Hatchling pet, we’ve raised a total of more than $1.9 million USD to support the ongoing earthquake and tsunami relief efforts in Japan. In May, we announced that for every Cenarion Hatchling purchased by July 31, 2011, 100% of the $10 USD adoption fee would be going to assist victims of this disaster -- and the community responded by opening up their hearts and wallets wide. Thanks again for your support and for helping to make an impact on the lives of those affected by these events.

The beta test approaches! We’ve just updated our System Check program and would like everyone to update their Battle.net Beta Profile information by running the new one. You should do this regardless of whether there have been hardware changes made to your system.

You can run the new System Check by visiting the Beta Profile settings of your Battle.net account:

I don’t have a Beta Profile
If you haven’t yet created a Beta Profile on your Battle.net account you’ll be presented with two download options, PC and Mac, for our System Check program. Running the program will present you with the Beta Test Opt-In Agreement, and once you agree to that it will immediately query basic computer specification information such as your type of video card, processor, and RAM. Clicking the Send button will then upload the shown information to your account.

On your Beta Profile page, you’ll want to ensure you at least have “Diablo Universe” checked for future testing, if not StarCraft and Warcraft as well. That’s it! You’re now eligible for future beta test opportunities.

I have a Beta Profile
If you’ve previously uploaded your system info you should use the links to download the new System Check program for PC or Mac and update your system info. Run the program, read through the Beta Test Opt-In Agreement that appears, and once you agree to that the program will immediately query your basic computer specification information. Click Send and the program will automatically update your profile with your system specifications. You’ll remain opted in for whichever beta tests you’ve previously selected, and you can change these selections on your Beta Profile page at any time.

Having current system specifications and checking the franchise boxes to express interest in beta testing our future products does not guarantee your entry into the beta test. We will grant a very limited number of people entry from the entire pool of those interested, based on their system specifications and other factors. While having an official Battle.net Beta Profile is one way to potentially get in, we’ll have information on other ways to increase your chances as we draw closer to the beta test.

Blue Posts

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Lack of Blue Posts / "Where are the Blues?"
The whole team is here today. We're actively reading the forums whenever we can while working on other tasks. :)(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Repair costs too expensive?
Repair costs have always scaled with item level. If anything, I'd say this game has a burden of too much gold out in the economy, rather than too little. 4 deaths in 1 5-player Heroic dungeon run is well above what you should expect as an average, and 100 gold is pretty easy to come by at level 85. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

New Warcraft Fan Art
The Blizzard Fan Art Section has been updated with five new pieces of fan artwork set within the Warcraft universe.

"The Raid" Livestream on August 6th @ 6:00PM PSTBlue Loon Films, the studio behind the upcoming World of Warcraft documentary, The Raid, has announced that the live stream of their film will take place on August 6th.

The Raid follows a guild over the course of a few months and features a host of content including in-game and at-home interviews with the players.

The game has gotten tired, boring, and either restrictive or too easy (depending on your guild or raid group).. Blizzard has made it clear that they have no intentions of further innovating WoW and are actually trying to streamline a lot of the game play to be even more simple.. You can't put in raid content that even mediocre guilds can clear in the first week and then expect them to want to farm it for 6 months.. There are many MANY guilds that don't have any interest in the frustration of heroic mode raiding.

300k more people who decided to do more with their life and leave the undeserved smug elitests and a terrible company (see real money AH in D3) behind.

Congrats to all those who quit, you have changed your life for the better. This is what happens when a company stops caring even one bit about its customers, lose enough customers and you will lose money too. Sadly some will come back but people are kidding themselves (blind faith in a game/company that they have wasted far too much time in can do that) if they think it will be a large number.

You have to remember, 600k was lost in Q1, 300k Q2...which means that it will be less and less each quarter - assume 1/2 each time:

150k Q3
75k Q4

All in all, you will have a million subscribers lost through gripes and rage quitting. However, new accounts are opening - and guess what - more will open once the next release comes out. Blizzard really has nothing to worry about...

300k more people who decided to do more with their life and leave the undeserved smug elitests and a terrible company (see real money AH in D3) behind.

Congrats to all those who quit, you have changed your life for the better. This is what happens when a company stops caring even one bit about its customers, lose enough customers and you will lose money too. Sadly some will come back but people are kidding themselves (blind faith in a game/company that they have wasted far too much time in can do that) if they think it will be a large number.

By doing more with their lives I hope you mean not playing an MMO. Dropping one MMO for another is not an improvement. Blizzard is a great game making company you forget D3 which will make it rain over Blizzard HQ with money.

You're more deluded than the rest. Your hate for WoW is all-consuming.

You have to remember, 600k was lost in Q1, 300k Q2...which means that it will be less and less each quarter - assume 1/2 each time:

150k Q3
75k Q4

All in all, you will have a million subscribers lost through gripes and rage quitting. However, new accounts are opening - and guess what - more will open once the next release comes out. Blizzard really has nothing to worry about...

6 year old game, it is getting old. The numbers will go down once new games are out, 900k subs lost and there isn't even any other actual decent MMO to play or even any good FPS games really atm. BF3,SWTOR,Guild Wars 2, tons of other titles coming in 2012 like D3. Thats going to be another big hit on WoW, and by the time those games are out, WoW will be 7 years old...senior citizen...it will soon be branded "too old" and new players will stop coming .

However, new accounts are opening - and guess what - more will open once the next release comes out. Blizzard really has nothing to worry about...

You have to understand that number is AFTER people came back from firelands and new accounts. By the time next expansion comes out (Q2), there will be 5-6 big games on the market all fighting hard for subs.

I really hope cataclysm ends next patch. Ive hated this from day one, didn't enjoy the zones one bit, the raids seemed very boring and there was nothing new in them. Also im so sick and tired of dragons now, i seriously hope to never see one again, i really do hope all the aspects die in the hour of twilight and the old gods who have been pushed into the spotlight just fizzle out with them. This of course is just my view on cata and i'm sure there are alot of people who do enjoy it, i just believe that many others have left because of the same reasons i have, The burning crusade and wrath of the lich king seemed to have a certain atmosphere and personality about them, cataclysm just didn't seem to have that and seemed more like a huge patch to me.

You have to understand that number is AFTER people came back from firelands and new accounts. By the time next expansion comes out (Q2), there will be 5-6 big games on the market all fighting hard for subs.

There is no doubt in my mind - I subscribed to Rift for a month, and came right back. People do not want to play games that are buggy and more misbalanced than WoW. Why? - because it is polished to the point where people bitch and moan about small bugs: class balance (which can never be balanced), itemization, profs, DC's, etc etc. They come back because of the flow of the game itself. They don't want to wait years for another to become as good as WoW did - they want it now. And if another game wants to destroy WoW - it better be just that and more - which is going to be hard to come by.

It's flat out true, regardless of your stance on casual or hardcore, the game isn't innovative anymore. I don't/can't raid anymore(due to prime time work from 1p to midnight) and the whole point of this game is to raid. So I have no incentive to play. I'm a great player, I don't stand in fire, I bring flasks and food buff, I come correctly enchanted and stat weighted, also I'm a tank. Yet I can't raid. When I do have a chance to PUG, I'm turned away cause I don't know the fights. Not like 5 minutes explanation and maybe a couple of wipes to get the hang of the fight. People won't bother. Telling me to Youtube the fights.. Ok I watch the videos and watch the videos. So then I "know" the fights. Well that doesn't help me get into PUG raids either cause I don't have the achievement. So explain how I can do better? The only arguments ever are get a guild group. Well please tell me a guild that raids 12p to 2 am, knowing I can't make commitments, and is still cool enough to let me come when I can. Yeah I thought so. This a GAME. Not a job. Having to make commitments to a game and PAY to play it. Really? Really? Can you honestly answer with a straight face? This is why the game is failing. Raiding is obsolete, it SHOULDN'T be the only avenue to the pinnacle. Sorry but a mountain doesn't only have one path. Yet y'all expect this game so have only one path. *rolls eyes*

Poor you. But did you ever look at the midnight raid guilds? There are always a few around. But it prolly means changing servers.

In my alt guild there are plenty of people raid worthy. But they don't get a chance since the guild doesn't have enough people to make a 10 man. And then they have the same issue going in to pugs. The experience they lack.

This, right here, is pretty much the answer to why a lot of people who have quit or unsubbed still post on the forums.

I assume I'm not alone in not really WANTing to quit WoW. I still get sad thinking about what I'm missing, and the people in my guild and friends list that I immediately lost contact with when I stopped raiding.

However, this game has been going on for a very very long time, all things considered, and Blizzard is failing to adapt.
Things like changing the lock out system, failing to remove roadblocks to players who can't play a game 4-5 nights a week anymore that aren't a "fun" part of the game anyways (the blue post on repair costs clearly shows they're missing the point still) and the insane amount of grinding needs for a raiding player are major issues... especially when there's still nearly nothing to do once hitting 85, outside of raiding (for a PVE player.)
There's absolutely no reason to grind out VP, rehashed dungeons, or grind dailies once the rewards were claimed, unless you're gearing up to raid. It's just too grindy to do "for fun" and it's too damn time consuming for people who are already raiding 4 nights a week.

One would HOPE some notice would be taken of just WHY the cancellation numbers are so high, and not look at it, like the fanboys post "our 11.1 million is far greater than your 900k!"
One would hope Blizz would look at this as a challenge to improve their products.

Unfortunately, Blizz's insistance on planning and announcing "premium" paid features... when they're posting loss after loss... seems to indicate Blizz is happy to simply patch their financial losses by gouging their "fanboys" with higher fees...

I'm fairly surprised they only lost that many. The expansion came out, people spent the first 3 levels sitting in Org/SW queuing with guildies for speed leveling, then went to the Deepholm -> Twilight Highlands til 85, then equipped their tabards and never went back out in the world. 7 months with no new content, one new raid, and we're probably 4-5 months from another content patch as well. It's just dragging out.

I suspect the people still playing or that came back after the Rift disappointment are, like me, just waiting for something better to come along. You can tell by the forums and the community that it's ALL automated at this point. People logging in just for raids, to do their dailies, then back out.

The game has no heartbeat any more, and honestly, it hasn't since The Burning Crusade. I'm in no position to speculate as to WHY that's the case, but there was a feeling of true enjoyment in TBC that died in Wrath. Little sparks here and there (specifically ICC and killing the Lich King for me) but for the most part, there's just no real feeling of attachment anymore.

I won't be the idiot that says "WOW IS DYING". I'll be the educated spectator saying "WoW has lost its WOW", and you'd be hard-pressed to prove me wrong. Blizzard/Activision should count their lucky stars that the number of people here today are still playing. They've certainly done very little to earn that loyalty since TBC ended.

wow will take a real hit when GW2 and SWTOR lunches, there needs to be competition between developers for games to be entertaining, wow has been declining because it doesn't have a real competitor, so stop your WOW fanboism and stop bashing new mmos when they're announced.

Or Ranikotar it was people that are just bored of the content/pace of the game. That and the high initial cost to start playing and be able to do everything right now is over $100 so new subscribers are very wary of joining. All things die in time and it's not like WoW's really all that dead. 300k/12mil = 2%. Not much of a real loss. Other MMO's would kill to have half the subscribers that WoW has.

You took "Logic&Math", shot it in the ass, teabagged it and then shot it again... Earlier this year a 600k decline in subscribers was announced. So this 300k is an additional loss!!! Which brings us around... what? 1 million subscribers???!!! And that's for starters...

Considering that the new R-A-F policy is supposed to have increased the subscriptions, I think it is easy for everyone to understand that the 300k loss would be greater...

Last but not least, do you even know what's going on around you..? Trial accounts had also their benefits increased. The price for Classic WoW is really low right now, at about 7 euros, and the Burning Crusade expansion is given for free once you buy Classic. Which brings the cost up to 60-65 euros?! I would still not give these money to play WoW right now but its 40% down the price you mentioned (which I suppose was wrong to begin with).

Ps. I should not forget that 1 month hasn't passed since the patch 4.2 was released with the brand new raid and those... "awesome" dailes, and neither should any of you. Cause the subscriptions decline combined with the struggling efforts to bring new and old players back, speaks volume for both WoW and Blizzard right now...